RPGC #2 Conversation Thread

[mdk]

I keep trying to claw my way into the two long ones, @Ellri and @Keyguyperson, and it's been obnoxiously hard to find time even just to READ one fully, so I might be a bit delayed getting to you guys. I think I can find time before the week is up, but I don't want to promise, just in case I'm wrong..... anyway if I need to come back after the voting deadline I will. You will have your critiques, dammit!

Incidentally.... I love the length, the detail, the effort, the passion, all that good stuff.... if it's this hard for me to leave reviews (and this is seriously like my favorite thing to do), I'm starting to think we should have a conversation with everybody about how best to keep readers/voters engaged. I refuse to do a word-limit, or anything of that nature, yet at the same time if there were three pieces as long as yours in the same contest, that starts to drift into the area of unreasonable burdens on the voters. I don't know if, or how, to deal with that potential problem, but I'd definitely like to get a head-start on solving it, and if anyone has ideas about how to do that without restricting the writers, I'm very eager to hear them.

[RomanAria]

@mdk We could always do two (or three) different categories. I find it unfair that the short entries have to compete with behemoth entries like Ellri's and Key's.
So here is what I propose. It would take a whole lot more work, but. Three different voting threads: Poem, Short Story, and Long Story. Allow the authors to decide which category they enter (within reason of course, sorry Key, but Small House would NEVER make it into Short Story, nice try though.) So that the shorter entries don't have to try to claw their way out from under the 40-80,000 word epics that some people send in.
We could still have just the one discussion thread, but three voting threads? Or even, just one voting thread but divided (either by horizontal rule or by doing different posts) into three categories.
Anyway, just a thought.

[mdk]

@Ellri your review is finished! One more to go!

@RomanAria -- Me personally, I don't like the idea of totally separating and/or stratifying things by length. Quality universally trumps quantity anyway -- it's a little too early in the life of RPGC for trends to mean much, but plenty of votes go to not-epic-length entries already.... My primary concern is that the task of reading/reviewing something that long might prevent someone from reading/reviewing the other stuff.

[Dedonus]

stulti homines tibi doceamus.

@RomanAria

Technically stulti homines could be a vocative, so it says something (mattering on how you translate the subjunctive) "let us, foolish men, teach [something} to you" or "We, foolish men, could teach [something] to you".

[RomanAria]

@mdk So then we give one judge, probably someone who isn't an impulsive teenager (so not me, then), the task of writing full, in-depth reviews of the long entries, and the rest of us work on reviewing the other ones. Sorry, I entirely misinterpreted what the problem was.

[Dedonus]

@RomanAria Just looked up doceo and it looks like it takes a double accusative construction (i.e. We teach (something in the accusative) to (someone in the accusative). I should have realized this sooner because this is one of the exceptions to the double accusative construction being a factitive sentence.

4 more entries to go (including the two long ones...

[RomanAria]

@Dedonus O_O I'm so very confused already. "factitive sentence"?

[Dedonus]

@Dedonus O_O I'm so very confused already. "factitive sentence"?

@RomanAria

A factitive sentence is like a linking sentence, but without a form of "sum". It is basically stating a fact (as the name hints at). For example, "I will paint the house purple" is a factitive sentence, as it establishes that the house = purple, but there is an active action in it (I will paint), as compared to a linking sentence, like "The house is purple". In the first sentence, both "house" and "purple" would be in the accusative, while "The house is purple" has two nominative nouns.

"We will teach [something] to someone" is not a factitive because "something" does not equal "someone".

Does that make more sense, or am I just spewing out more jargon?

[Keyguyperson]

<Snipped quote by RomanAria>

A factitive sentence is like a linking sentence, but without a form of "sum". It is basically stating a fact (as the name hints at). For example, "I will paint the house purple" is a factitive sentence, as it establishes that the house = purple, but there is an active action in it (I will paint), as compared to a linking sentence, like "The house is purple". In the first sentence, both "house" and "purple" would be in the accusative, while "The house is purple" has two nominative nouns.

"We will teach [something] to someone" is not a factitive because "something" does not equal "someone".

Does that make more sense, or am I just spewing out more jargon?

@Dedonus

[RomanAria]

@Keyguyperson Oh, key, it's not quite that bad.
But wait, @Dedonus I'm not entirely sure that I get it? Why is "house" accusative? Is it because it's like the object of an implied preposition or something? I'd almost think it would be dative to be the direct object...

[Dedonus]

@Keyguyperson Oh, key, it's not quite that bad.
But wait, @Dedonus I'm not entirely sure that I get it? Why is "house" accusative? Is it because it's like the object of an implied preposition or something? I'd almost think it would be dative to be the direct object...

@RomanAria

The first thing we have to address is that doceo is more of an exception. Usually, when you have a verb of showing, telling, or giving, you have an accusative direct object and a dative indirect object.

-I give the ball (accusative) to you (dative).
-I told the secret (accusative) to you (dative).
-I will show the house (accusative) to you (dative).
-etc.

For doceo, instead of a dative indirect object, as you would expect, you get a second accusative.

-I taught the grammar of Latin (accusative) to you (accusative) (or I taught you the grammar of Latin).

Now to get back to the factitive sentence pattern. Doceo is usually brought up because it is an example of a double accusative that is NOT a factitive sentence. How I see factitive sentences are like active linking sentences (if that makes any sense).

-I will paint the house (accusative) purple (accusative). FACTITIVE
-The house (nominative) is purple (nominative). LINKING

-The Roman people elected our friend (accusative) Consul (accusative). FACTITIVE
-Our friend(nominative) is a Consul (nominative). LINKING

-The Romans considered Romulus (accusative) a god (accusative). FACTITIVE
-The Romulus (nominative) is a god (nominative). LINKING

Linking verbs are like equal signs (=). They establish the relationship between two nouns (or a noun and an adjective) and show that they are "equal". In a linking sentence, these two nouns (or adjective) must both be in the nominative case (kind of like noun-adjective agreement).

Just like in linking verbs, factitive sentences also establish a relationship between two nouns (or adjective). However, there is a third party that is making this connection. Since all these nouns that form a factitive sentence take an accusative object, the complement (i.e. purple, Consul, god) must also be in the same case (the accusative). Therefore, in the example sentences above, both the factitive and linking sentences are giving the same information. The factitive just gives MORE information (i.e. who made the accusative the way it is).

Does that help?

Edit: One of the biggest problems I see in teaching Latin is that, even though most of my students are native English speakers, some people don't know English grammar very well. I'm not saying this about you, but one problem is that how we usually teach Latin is that we kind of assume that our students have a basic understanding of English grammar (direct objects, indirect objects, active and passive voice, et cetera). Honestly, I feel that Latin (and Greek) actually helps with understanding English grammar because you have to look at way things are and not just accept that things are because it feels natural.

For instance, my junior year in high school (even though I went to a pretty well-off school, grammar was basically an afterthought in the majority of my English classes), I did not fully understand when to use the correct relative pronoun (who, whom, whose, et cetera), but when we went over relative pronouns in Latin, it made a whole lot more sense because of noun-adjective agreement. The relative pronoun (in Latin) must match its antecedent (I usually have to explain this too) in gender and number, but its case (i.e. usage) is determined by its role in the relative clause. Through learning Latin, I understand that you use whom when it is the direct object, whose when its a possessive pronoun, and who when its the subject.

Edit2: Sorry for derailing the thread. Latin (and Greek, in my case) nerds just nerding out here. Move along. Nothing to see here. :D

[RomanAria]

@Dedonus So in all of those you would almost have an implied "esse"...
I will paint the house (to be) purple.
The roman people elected our friend (to be) consul.
The Romans considered Romulus (to be) a god.
I don't know why but it makes me think kind of like an indirect statement... The infinitive and all the accusatives.
Edit: Ugh you edit-ninja'd me. But yes, I find that English grammar sticks SOO much better when we've covered it in Latin. And I have little idea of how the parts of speech actually WORK in English. I mean, I use decent grammar, but lolwhatsapredicate.

[Dedonus]

@Dedonus So in all of those you would almost have an implied "esse"...
I will paint the house (to be) purple.
The roman people elected our friend (to be) consul.
The Romans considered Romulus (to be) a god.
I don't know why but it makes me think kind of like an indirect statement... The infinitive and all the accusatives.

@RomanAria

Yes. It is kind of like an indirect statement. The problem is that in Latin 101, we haven't taught them about indirect statements yet. :D

[Dedonus]

And I have little idea of how the parts of speech actually WORK in English. I mean, I use decent grammar, but lolwhatsapredicate.

@RomanAria

Don't worry. I wouldn't know what a predicate is if I had not taken Latin (and Greek). :D

[Ellri]

@mdk That review was very nice. We'll have to look it up again when we do start working on finishing Enhanced, as it provided some very good tips.

@RomanAria Not a bad idea to consider judging separately. The style between the typical shorter story here and the stories like ours or Keyguy's is almost as different as it is between the average short story and a poem. But that doesn't mean the short ones lack quality. They simply have a different type of quality.

In many ways, they can often be more complete, as the author has time to ensure the whole scale of happenings is included without rushing.

[mdk]

@Keyguyperson your review is complete, and that should be everyone I think. If anyone wants to talk more about anything I said, I'm down for dialogues -- otherwise we're in the final weekend of voting now, so make sure you've picked your winner. We'll have results for the vote and the bonus winners next week. And TTL, too -- so get those writing hats back on.

[mdk]

and now that I have a minute, recapturing some of the discussions you guys tried to start:

@mdk You're correct with the assumption that this story was mainly about the dialogue. I didn't use that MacGuffin deliberately, because I didn't even know about that (so thanks for the link), but if I had known about I probably would have used it deliberately. There is a lack of conflict and change, I know, that was on purpose. I merely wanted to explore the idea of ultimate power and the power of placebo's. I often thought during writing that it was too bad there was no bonus category for writing about power and have absolutely nothing exciting happen whatsoever. I probably would have won that...

Now, about the extraneous thoughts, I kinda understand what you mean by that (after I looked the term up real quick), but I don't understand the relation to the example you presented. If you could elaborate just a bit on that, that would be great. I see how I could have cut it in two sentences and the last comma was probably unneeded, but did that fall under the extraneous thought? Because to me it was simply describing Andy's uncommon attire, which came back during the conversation with Jack. So I don't really get what I did wrong there (aside from what I already mentioned).

I hope it wasn't as much as a comma-infestation as it was with the first labour, because I did try to do better with that this time.

@WiseDragonGirl

The one I quoted about cookie monster probably wasn't the best example, I'll admit. What I meant to be driving at was, there's a limit to how much description is needed to get the point across -- if for instance you'd written "A cookie monster shirt, with three hairs poking out the top of his head, and the caption "Cookies!!" with giant exclamation points in comic-sans font in red lettering with white outlines and he's holding four cookies and three of them already have bites out, and they're chocolate chip, which is Andy's favorite flavor and that's why he likes the shirt." Nobody writes that because that's ridiculous. Nobody writes "Some stupid T-shirt," either, because that communicates almost nothing. Somewhere between those extremes, there's a a balance -- not a 'perfect balance' or a 'correct balance,' or anything like that, but a balance. What I meant to say is, over the whole story, it feels like you tended more towards giving more than was necessary, and maybe a little less would flow better. Truth is though, whatever you decide is enough, that's the only rule that matters. It's just something to think about as you're writing -- as long as your level of detail is a conscious decision, it's never wrong.

@mdk That review was very nice. We'll have to look it up again when we do start working on finishing Enhanced, as it provided some very good tips.

@Ellri

hooray, validation! Do finish it.

......huh, I thought there were more. Well this double-post is unnecessary, innit?

[Gwynbleidd]

Here I am taking forever to get reviews up again. It will happen I swear!

[Ellri]

We don't have a single favorite. Hence lack of a vote.